Commercially is today used titanium oxide as a white pigment in different food products.
Titanium oxide is e.g. used for panning confectionary products in order to make a coating with the white colouring pigment.
As known in the art panning involves building up a layer of closely knit sugar crystals around the outside of a preformed centre (e.g. a chewing gum base) by spraying a syrup on the centres in a specially designed panning machine. A panned coating may be a process where many fine layers are applied to the preformed centre and then dried.
For further details see e.g. page 328 of the textbook of E. B. Jackson with title “Sugar Confectionary Manufacture” (ISBN 0 7514 0197 8).
When one uses pigments (e.g. titanium oxide) in a panning process a suitable composition comprising that pigment is mixed with the syrup and this syrup/pigment mixture is then used for the panning.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,571,547 (column 5, lines 51-57) is mentioned that a syrup suitable for panning e.g. a chewing gum may comprise calcium carbonate as pigment. Calcium carbonate is simply mentioned as an example in a list of examples that also comprises titanium oxide.
None of the working examples of U.S. Pat. No. 5,571,547 use calcium carbonate as white pigment—all examples use titanium oxide as the white pigment.
Titanium oxide is today widely used as a white pigment in the panning process for white colouring of confectionary products such as chewing gums or chocolate lentils.
To our knowledge calcium carbonate is today not used commercially in a significant way as a white pigment in a panning process for white colouring a confectionary product such as chewing gums or chocolate lentils.
Without being limited to theory, it is believed that one reason for this may be that some of the today used compositions are not giving good results (no good/acceptable white colouring) when calcium carbonate is used as a white pigment in a panning process.
Another use of titanium oxide is whitening of fat reduced foods like low fat salad dressings and low fat mayonnaise.
To our knowledge calcium carbonate is today not used commercially in a significant way as a white pigment in such fat reduced foods.
Without being limited to theory, it is believed that one reason for this may be that some of the today used compositions are not giving good results (no good/acceptable white colouring) when calcium carbonate is used as a white pigment in fat reduced foods.
Titanium oxide is used even though many commercial providers would like to use other white pigments. One reason for this is that titanium oxide is also used in paint (e.g. paint for painting e.g. a wall) and since it is used for paint it can imply some negative consumer “feelings” in relation to edible products.
JP 11 04330 (Eisai, 1999) essentially relates to a special sugar coated riboflavin tablet. The sugar coat includes a pigment and a binder. Numerous examples of suitable pigments are mentioned such as e.g. Titanium oxide, silicon dioxide and calcium carbonate. Further are mentioned numerous examples of suitable binders—such as e.g. polyvinyl pyrrolidone, hydroxypropyl cellulose and gum Arabic). In working example 1 is used calcium carbonate and gum Arabic as binder.
Accordingly, gum Arabic is in JP 11 04330 NOT used as a hydrocolloid (dispersing agent) but as a glue/binder—i.e. as it is well known that gum Arabic may be used as a glue on stamps. It is well known that many of the other mentioned examples of binders (e.g. polyvinyl pyrrolidone, hydroxypropyl cellulose) can not be used as a hydrocolloid (dispersing agent) as discussed herein.
The article (S. Dursch, K. Schwarz: Microencapsulation properties of two different types of n-octenylsuccinate-derivatised starch, European food research and technol., vol. 222, 20 Oct. 2005 pages 155-164) described use of starch octenyl succinate derivative (n-OSA starch) for micro-encapsulation of fish oil. The n-OSA starch may be said to be used as an emulsifier for a liquid/liquid system (i.e. fish oil drops in a water phase). In this article, it is not described nor suggested to use the n-OSA starch as a dispersing agent in a solid/liquid suspension [e.g. in a suspension of a solid pigment (e.g. calcium carbonate) in a water phase].
International PCT application with application number PCT/EP2008/058447 was filed 1 Jul. 2008. Applicant is Chr. Hansen A/S and it was NOT PUBLISHED at the 7 Jan. 2009 priority date of this present application.
PCT/EP2008/058447 describes a water-dispersible composition comprising at least solid pigment and at least 5 wt % of at least one starch octenyl succinate derivative as a hydrocolloid (see e.g. claim 1 and 14).
The water-dispersible composition as described herein also uses octenyl succinate derivative as a hydrocolloid.
PCT/EP2008/058447 does not explicitly mention calcium carbonate as an example of a pigment.